Health insurance

[turtlevette]

You are sorry for his wife but under your philosophy you'd let people with chronic conditions die. We can't have any redistribution of wealth.

But if you work for someone that's what you have. A pool of risk. You are paying for the chronically sicker with your contribution. It may be paid by the company but it is your contribution paid from your labor.

So we already have a system that is redistribution of wealth pre health care act. The difference is that now the pool of risk is much larger.

You don't want any redistribution of wealth until you or your kid gets really sick. Right. Then you'll be all for it.

Its a me me approach to government.

A civilized society does not let people die in ditches.

 

[MikeHigg]

And then the guy that tries to explain Canada doesn't have near the system the US has just shows what I'm talking about, he knows nothing about the Canadian system other than what's been heard on TV (Faux Noos) or the radio, Canada has a fine system with good Doctors, talk with some professional people there and see what they say. If a Canadian comes to the US for treatment its because their system has contracts for certain treatment with our suppliers, not because they can't do it but because its less expensive, and sometimes their patient wants to pop across the border for treatment rather than driving 300 or 400 miles. My friends in Canada who are engineers and business people much prefer their system to ours but if you are listening to Faux Noos you won't hear that.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: Al
Very few Americans travel to Canada for life threatening treatment.


No, but you come by the unending **busloads** for drugs and medications. I live in a border city and it is no small part of our economy; alongside the blocks and blocks of bars servicing 19- and 20-year old Americans flocking here to (legally) drink, smoke weed and contract the services of escorts.

 

[Mr Nice]

Escorts?

They need Christian morals and values.

 

[surfstar]

Originally Posted By: Mr Nice
Escorts?

They need Christian morals and values.


I think its more likely that they're doing it for the money.

 

[Al]

Originally Posted By: uc50ic4more
Originally Posted By: Al
Very few Americans travel to Canada for life threatening treatment.


No, but you come by the unending **busloads** for drugs and medications. I live in a border city and it is no small part of our economy; alongside the blocks and blocks of bars servicing 19- and 20-year old Americans flocking here to (legally) drink, smoke weed and contract the services of escorts.

How does that relate to the fact that your health care facilities are inferior to those in the U.S? And the fact that you have "sometimes" long waits for life threatening illnesses?

 

[brave sir robin]

Been a long time since I last visited this site but couldn't resist responding to a post I am fairly expert on.

This was something I said on another website regarding our current system.

I have been working on the insurance/ business side of healthcare for 10+ years. There is major amounts of collusion and price gouging going on. The hospital system I work for is a “not for profit” that also happens to own a substantial portion of a major health insurance company everyone in the United States is familiar with. NOPE NOTHING TO SEE HERE MOVE ALONG>>>>>>

The system I work for must maintain a certain amount of charitable right offs to keep their “not for profit” status. One of the ways they do this is by the weird way hospital charges and bills are put together.

Here is an example
50k inpatient stay
patient has Medi-cal (California’s version of Medicaid)
Medi-cal pays 5-6k hospital then uses the remaining balance as a charitable right off. “45k write off see how generous and helpful we are?”

Same 50k stay but with a “contracted insurance” this time
pays say 15-20k
balance is considered “contractual write off”

Keep in mind that by law Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement levels are required to make it so providers do not lose any money on services at the minimum and still make a modest profit.

 

[brave sir robin]

More from my other post.

I work in and profit from the current system. I am a patient advocate by trade. I work in this system from the inside and I am telling you Its broken. I would trade for the Canadian model in a hot second if I could.

Our model is great if you have really good insurance or are around the federal poverty level in income. Not so much if you are a working borderline ‘middle class’ person (which is what most people fall under btw)

personal example time:
two weeks ago I had an appointment with a specialist. This 20 minute visit cost 650.00 of which my insurance paid 56.00 with me being responsible for the rest (I accidentally chose this poop coverage because it had the same name as the year priors coverage that was better). This exact same visit a year n half before cost 550.00 of which my insurance paid 110.00 and I had no further out of pocket expense.

I pay 200.00 a month for my heath coverage from my employer plus all the nonsense charges from visits etc.
If I made less money I would have ZERO out of pocket expenses either monthly or for dr visits.

I have patients whose family health insurance monthly premium from employers is around 1500.00. That is insanity and I honestly have no clue how in the heck people pay that.

regarding the stats you put up I simply do not buy it. In the 12 years I have worked in healthcare I have never once heard of a Canadian citizen coming to any of the four hospitals I have worked at to received our ‘better’ care. Not a single time. The only time I have ever seen anything like that is in the news from very biased sources. I have had patients from a couple few south American and China (apparently its common for well of Chinese people to have their babies in the US to make them citizens…yes its a real thing) countries come up here for treatment but never one from Europe or Canada.

 

[brave sir robin]

and some more

I recently had a patient that had no health coverage. 60yr old former master mechanic now service writer for small shop. He makes 15 bucks an hour working full time. His wife was recently laid off and he is their sole source of income. They live in a trailer park. He has stomach cancer but the hospital I work at does not have an oncology department so they had him in the ED for three days while trying to get one of the affiliated hospitals to take him but because he has no coverage and makes too much money for Medi-cal none of these hospitals would accept him as a transfer.

A couple years ago I had another patient that had put off seeing a dr for a year because she had no coverage and could not afford to pay out of pocket to see a Dr. Eventually she was able to get on a county health program and was seen. She was diagnosed with bladder cancer and by the time it was caught she had maybe a month left to live. Bladder cancer is one of those types that is defeat able if caught early but once it gets late stage you are done. This woman was broken because she tried to do things the ‘right’ way.

If I had a nickel for every patient that told me “I didn’t want to come in because I don’t have insurance but I couldn’t take it (pain, bleeding…etc) anymore” I could buy a PS4.

Most people in the US are 2-3 months missed salary away from being homeless. To most people cost is everything.

98% of something is always better than 100% of nothing.

 

[brave sir robin]

last chunk

I am not some bicycle commuting dandelion eating bleeding heart liberal.

The two cases I mentioned are not particularly rare. Their circumstances would not have even occurred in other first world countries because their illnesses would have been caught and treatment started long before needing to be hospitalized in the first place. Oh and that woman would still be alive.

The most common complaint about the countries you mentioned is regarding convenience issues like wait times. People aren’t going into bankruptcy because they got sick and they aren’t dying of easily preventable causes like they do here.

If we were to put up a poll asking Canadian visitors to this site (which lets face it doesn’t exactly cater to the super leftist crowd) which system they would prefer. Theirs or ours probably 75-80% of them would say something along the lines of ‘ours isn’t perfect but screw the US system’

I talk with Dr’s and High level nurses on a daily basis and most of them say pretty much this: The main advantage healthcare has in the US over other countries is our ability to keep really sick people ‘alive’ longer than other places. Things like being vented or intubated life support type situations we are great at. But at a certain point it becomes a quality of life question.

I work on the inside and see on a daily basis how it works. This is literally what I do for a living and the system as it stands is a racket.

 

[Al]

Thanks robin. Insightful posts.

 

[cjcride]

Good posts Robin. Lived in Canada for about 60 years and I bet over 90% prefer our Medical system over the US one.